Lots of talk of dieting and nutrition on the site lately. Here's an excel workbook I put together to help me with my diet. Once it's setup with foods you commonly consume, it's very slick. Especially if you have a smartphone to work with it all on.

Whenever you eat a new food just select it from the next blank drop down box under "Food." The caloric information for the food will be automatically filled out based upon 1 "base unit" of the food. Enter a number in the "Portion" column corresponding to how much you ate. This "portion" amount allows you to either make rough estimates or provide accurate numbers, based upon your preferences.

If you add more than fifty foods to the food list, you'll run into some problems. Similarly, if you have more than 20 different foods in a day, you'll also run into problems. They can be fixed, but I leave it to you to figure this out if it's a problem.

Lots of talk of dieting and nutrition on the site lately. Here's an excel workbook I put together to help me with my diet. Once it's setup with foods you commonly consume, it's very slick. Especially if you have a smartphone to work with it all on.

Whenever you eat a new food just select it from the next blank drop down box under "Food." The caloric information for the food will be automatically filled out based upon 1 "base unit" of the food. Enter a number in the "Portion" column corresponding to how much you ate. This "portion" amount allows you to either make rough estimates or provide accurate numbers, based upon your preferences.

If you add more than fifty foods to the food list, you'll run into some problems. Similarly, if you have more than 20 different foods in a day, you'll also run into problems. They can be fixed, but I leave it to you to figure this out if it's a problem.

BMR Calculations:

Daily Intake List:

Food List:

Great job. I'd suggest that you take it one step further, and add a worksheet that summarizes your results by day (ie, one line per day). I have used the following:

The last column, calc_d_wt, is the theoretical daily fat loss calculated as

(1 lb of fat / 3500 kcal) × kcal_balance .

After a sufficient length of time, you can compare your cumulative theoretical weight loss to your actual weight loss to check the validity of your calculated energy requirements.

Jay

P.S. Also good to know that one can upload an excel spreadsheet to server.

that seems like a lot of work. I'd rather just be fat. And by fat I mean more than 5%

I find that it helps my motivation to call people that are over 8% body fat, "Fatties."

LOL, I heard Tony Robbins say that if your fat you need to own up to it, don't use softeners like "im average" or "I'm skinnier than most" he says you need to look in the mirror and say I am a fat disgusting pig and my life will suffer for it.

Lots of talk of dieting and nutrition on the site lately. Here's an excel workbook I put together to help me with my diet. Once it's setup with foods you commonly consume, it's very slick. Especially if you have a smartphone to work with it all on.

Whenever you eat a new food just select it from the next blank drop down box under "Food." The caloric information for the food will be automatically filled out based upon 1 "base unit" of the food. Enter a number in the "Portion" column corresponding to how much you ate. This "portion" amount allows you to either make rough estimates or provide accurate numbers, based upon your preferences.

If you add more than fifty foods to the food list, you'll run into some problems. Similarly, if you have more than 20 different foods in a day, you'll also run into problems. They can be fixed, but I leave it to you to figure this out if it's a problem.

BMR Calculations:

Daily Intake List:

Food List:

Great job. I'd suggest that you take it one step further, and add a worksheet that summarizes your results by day (ie, one line per day). I have used the following:

[img]http://jt512.dyndns.org/images/food-diary.jpg[/img]

The last column, calc_d_wt, is the theoretical daily fat loss calculated as

(1 lb of fat / 3500 kcal) × kcal_balance .

After a sufficient length of time, you can compare your cumulative theoretical weight loss to your actual weight loss to check the validity of your calculated energy requirements.

Jay

P.S. Also good to know that one can upload an excel spreadsheet to server.

Jay, I love the fact that you're geekier than me. But if I ever need to go on a diet (and I'm sure that day will come) I am SO going to steal emulate every last method of yours I can. The geek approach is probably the only one that would actually work for me.

Jay, I love the fact that you're geekier than me. But if I ever need to go on a diet (and I'm sure that day will come) I am SO going to steal emulate every last method of yours I can. The geek approach is probably the only one that would actually work for me.

Cheers!

GO

Actually, I undermined my own geekiness by posting a screen shot of the database query viewed in a GUI application. Naturally, I prefer to work at the command line:

Jay, I love the fact that you're geekier than me. But if I ever need to go on a diet (and I'm sure that day will come) I am SO going to steal emulate every last method of yours I can. The geek approach is probably the only one that would actually work for me.

Cheers!

GO

Actually, I undermined my own geekiness by posting a screen shot of the database query viewed in a GUI application. Naturally, I prefer to work at the command line:

There, that's better.

Jay

P.S. Have I mentioned that I host these images on my own web server?

I lol'ed.

Oh, and extra points for using mysql. I'd have been disappointed if it was in access. If you had an oracle instance running on your home machine, that would have been a bit much, I would have thought you were bragging. (I had to disable mine, it was soaking up too much memory.)

that seems like a lot of work. I'd rather just be fat. And by fat I mean more than 5%

I find that it helps my motivation to call people that are over 8% body fat, "Fatties."

I'm curious what my body fat % is, but not curious enough to go get tested. Anybody have any good tricks or rules of thumb I could use to get a guestimate? I'm 6' tall, 195 lbs, can probably pinch and inch or so. I'm guessing 16% or so, but I really have no idea.

that seems like a lot of work. I'd rather just be fat. And by fat I mean more than 5%

I find that it helps my motivation to call people that are over 8% body fat, "Fatties."

I'm curious what my body fat % is, but not curious enough to go get tested. Anybody have any good tricks or rules of thumb I could use to get a guestimate? I'm 6' tall, 195 lbs, can probably pinch and inch or so. I'm guessing 16% or so, but I really have no idea.

You can buy a caliper and get a pretty decent answer on your own. Shouldn't cost you much at all.

that seems like a lot of work. I'd rather just be fat. And by fat I mean more than 5%

I find that it helps my motivation to call people that are over 8% body fat, "Fatties."

I'm curious what my body fat % is, but not curious enough to go get tested. Anybody have any good tricks or rules of thumb I could use to get a guestimate? I'm 6' tall, 195 lbs, can probably pinch and inch or so. I'm guessing 16% or so, but I really have no idea.

You can buy a caliper and get a pretty decent answer on your own.

No, you can't. Getting even a remotely accurate estimate of body fat % using calipers requires training and experience. An untrained user trying to measure body fat on a person with actual body fat of 15% could easily estimate from 8% to over 20%.

that seems like a lot of work. I'd rather just be fat. And by fat I mean more than 5%

I find that it helps my motivation to call people that are over 8% body fat, "Fatties."

I'm curious what my body fat % is, but not curious enough to go get tested. Anybody have any good tricks or rules of thumb I could use to get a guestimate? I'm 6' tall, 195 lbs, can probably pinch and inch or so. I'm guessing 16% or so, but I really have no idea.

at 16% youd have aout 31 lbs of fat. Which would put you at 164 lbs wo any fat. My vote is your higher than that unless you are a seriously stacked body builder type at 6 feet tall, and big boned/high body mass index.

My brother is 7% body fat 6 1, 185 lbs. He can lift mad weight, does a dozen pull ups with two 90 pounds hanging off him, can squat three reps of 420 lbs. Can bench 250lbs in set of 6. He's lifted weights 5 days a week for the last 6 years and climbs another 2-3 days a week on top of that, He's probably medium sized frame for his height.

After a sufficient length of time, you can compare your cumulative theoretical weight loss to your actual weight loss to check the validity of your calculated energy requirements.

How accurate was it for you ? I'd think that it'd have too many inaccuracies at least in my life to be usable for that. I do cardio type exercises, like hiking that can be hard to measure calorie-wise. There's water loss/gain. Eating in restaurants.

After a sufficient length of time, you can compare your cumulative theoretical weight loss to your actual weight loss to check the validity of your calculated energy requirements.

How accurate was it for you ?

Who cares? If after a sufficient length of time you find that you are losing weight faster or slower than the model would predict, then you adjust your target caloric intake accordingly. That's the point of calculating your theoretical weight loss according to the model.

In reply to:

I'd think that it'd have too many inaccuracies at least in my life to be usable for that. I do cardio type exercises, like hiking that can be hard to measure calorie-wise.

What's so hard about estimating the amount of energy expended by hiking? There are published tables for that.

Who cares? If after a sufficient length of time you find that you are losing weight faster or slower than the model would predict, then you adjust your target caloric intake accordingly. That's the point of calculating your theoretical weight loss according to the model.

I was curious how accurate it was for you using the published resting daily calorie expenditure, and exercise calorie needs numbers . If you're unsure about one of the inputs, then you can adjust it based on empirical data, but it all falls apart if you have inaccurate data on both your calorie source and expenditure side.

In reply to:

What's so hard about estimating the amount of energy expended by hiking? There are published tables for that.

I'm sure there are lots of numbers out there, but I doubt their accuracy. It's hard to quantify the level of effort while hiking/mountaineering short of wearing a heart rate monitor or something like that. Prove me wrong though and tell me how much is it to do the Keyhole Route on Longs for example.

Who cares? If after a sufficient length of time you find that you are losing weight faster or slower than the model would predict, then you adjust your target caloric intake accordingly. That's the point of calculating your theoretical weight loss according to the model.

I was curious how accurate it was for you using the published resting daily calorie expenditure, and exercise calorie needs numbers . If you're unsure about one of the inputs, then you can adjust it based on empirical data, but it all falls apart if you have inaccurate data on both your calorie source and expenditure side.

The formulas are a good starting point. In my experience from working on nutritional clinical trials in which we had to ensure that we were feeding the correct number of calories for each subject, the formulas were usually quite good, and at most we had to make minor adjustments to the diets after monitoring subjects for a few weeks. Occasionally, the formulas would seriously underpredict energy requirements, most often for high-end endurance athletes.

In reply to:

In reply to:

What's so hard about estimating the amount of energy expended by hiking? There are published tables for that.

I'm sure there are lots of numbers out there, but I doubt their accuracy.

that seems like a lot of work. I'd rather just be fat. And by fat I mean more than 5%

I find that it helps my motivation to call people that are over 8% body fat, "Fatties."

I'm curious what my body fat % is, but not curious enough to go get tested. Anybody have any good tricks or rules of thumb I could use to get a guestimate? I'm 6' tall, 195 lbs, can probably pinch and inch or so. I'm guessing 16% or so, but I really have no idea.

at 16% youd have aout 31 lbs of fat. Which would put you at 164 lbs wo any fat. My vote is your higher than that unless you are a seriously stacked body builder type at 6 feet tall, and big boned/high body mass index.

My brother is 7% body fat 6 1, 185 lbs. He can lift mad weight, does a dozen pull ups with two 90 pounds hanging off him, can squat three reps of 420 lbs. Can bench 250lbs in set of 6. He's lifted weights 5 days a week for the last 6 years and climbs another 2-3 days a week on top of that, He's probably medium sized frame for his height.

Maybe closer to 22%?

JT's right though... it's hard to say.

So, I was curious, and got it tested. I came out at 13%, which was lower than I expected. I'm going to lose 15 lbs, and see what affect it has on my climbing. I did a couple of benchmark tests (max weight pull ups, max weight open handed hangs, etc) which I'll also test after I lose the weight.